Mary Y. Yang
Mary Y. Yang is a designer and educator based in Boston, MA. She is the founder of Open Rehearsal, a design studio that collaborates with cultural and educational clients on research and projects spanning brand identities, exhibition graphics, book design, environmental graphics, and editorial design. Her work has been recognized by Communication Arts and featured in AIGA, PRINT Magazine, Society of Typographic Arts, Design360°, and Hyperallergic. She has been named as one of Graphic Design USA’s 2026 People to Watch.
       Yang is an Assistant Professor at Boston University, where she teaches in both the undergraduate and graduate Graphic Design programs. Her research and pedagogical approach examine how language can be used as a tool for multilingual exchange, co-building history, embodied learning, and cultivating spaces for collective knowledge. She is currently the 2025–2026 Artist-Writer-in-Residence at Johns Hopkins University’s University Writing Program. In addition to her role as an educator, Yang is the co-founder of Radical Characters, an educational and curatorial platform that researches and explores graphic design, typography, and culture through Hanzi (Chinese characters).  
        Yang holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in Communication Design from Washington University in St. Louis, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. She has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and lectured at the University of Washington. Previously, she has worked on the graphic and brand design team at Victoria’s Secret PINK (NYC), the University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA) and Studio Blue (Chicago, IL).


    Work
    2019–2025

    Exhibition design, visual designAs, Not For: Dethroning Our Absolutes

    Stone Gallery, Boston University Art Galleries
    Boston, MA, 2020
    Curated by Jerome Harris
    Exhibition photography: Tony Luong
    I organized, art directed, and designed the exhibition design in collaboration with BU SVA Graphic Design students Ashlie Dawkins, Geo Ferrari, Jay Li, and Angela Lian. Curated by Jerome Harris. As, Not For aims to promote the inclusion of neglected Black designers and their developed methodologies and challenge the ubiquity of White and anti-Black aesthetics in our designed world. These practitioners are absent in too many classroom lectures, and their methods mostly invisible or uncredited in the field .
    Watch tour video in collaboration with BU CFA Communications

    ✸ Featured in Hyperallergic and BU CFA
    ✸ Exhibition included in Thinking Through Graphic Design History: Challenging the Canon by Aggie Toppins (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025)


    Exhibition design, visual identityNow What?! Advocacy, Activism & Alliances
    in American Architecture Since 1968

    Boston Society for Architecture
    Boston, MA, 2022Collaborator: Marks + Spaces
    Curators: Architexx
    Project management: Point Line Projects
    Exhibition photography: Paige McWhorter
    Exhibition dates: March 10 – October 31, 2022
     Now What?! examines the overlooked history of architects and designers advancing civil rights, women’s, and LGBTQ movements. I co-led the exhibition design, in collaboration with Jessie Rubenstein (Marks + Spaces), and mentored five Boston University students through research and spatial development. I developed the interpretive systems and implemented the visual identity, using modular displays and participatory elements to foreground design’s civic impact. The exhibition positions the built environment as a site of activism and collective action.

     Read interview about the exhibition design

    ✸ Communication Arts Typography Award
    ✸ Presented at Boston Society for Architecture, affiliated with Boston Design Week


    Information designThe Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2020

    Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
    London, UK, 2025
     Editors: Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns
         This timeline was published in The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2020, an international project which brings together 1200 entries on women architects and on women active as architectural educators, journalists, policy makers, theorists, historians, activists and urbanists to map the ways in which women have shaped the global built environment.

    I collaborated with the editors, Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns, to design a timeline that provides historical context and visualizes key events on women in architecture. 


    Exhibition identity design, book designNew England Triennial

    deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and Fruitlands Museum
    Boston, MA, 2022
    Curators: Sarah Montross, Senior Curator, deCordova, Shana Dumont Garr, Curator, Fruitlands, with Krista Alba, Curatorial Assistant, deCordova
    Identity design concept collaborator: Angela Lian
    Exhibition photography: Julia Featheringill
    Exhibition dates: deCordova: April 8, 2022 – September 11, 2022 & Fruitlands: April 8, 2022 – October 2, 2022    The New England Triennial 2022 celebrated contemporary art across the Northeast, presented across two venues. I designed the exhibition identity, including graphics and catalogue, inspired by Earthseed, the belief system from Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. The typography and visual identity translated Butler’s philosophy into form, using custom overlapping type to reflect change as a constant, reinforcing the Triennial’s themes of transformation, adaptation, and resilience.

    ✸ Communication Arts Typography Award


    Exhibition identity designNew Formations
    ClientdeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park
    Lincoln, MA, 2022
    New Formations is a contemporary art exhibition exploring human bodies in collective performance, ritual, and movement. I designed the exhibition identity, including the title wall, wall labels, color palette, and wall vinyl, using typography that suggests motion and form to reinforce the exhibition’s themes of kinship, transformation, and embodied experience.


    Identity designString Attached Concert Series

    University of Washington School of Music
    Seattle, WA, 2019     Identity design for the University of Washington School of Music “Strings Attached” 2019–20 concert series. I developed a visual identity that explores the relationship between musical notation and typography to create a cohesive and expressive design system across promotional materials and print collateral.

    Read interview


    Identity designRISD Commencement

    Dunkin’ Donuts Center
    Providence, RI, 2022
    Collaborator: Suzie Shin
    Art director: Huy Vu
    Motion designer: Kyle Green
    RISD Commencement 2022 on YouTube    Identity design for the RISD Commencement 2022 that celebrates the Class of 2022 and 2022. The identity is driven by celebratory shapes, fresh gradients, and distorted type created with custom, digital brushes. 

    ✸ Graphic Design USA, Design Award


    Book designSIMBIG50: Celebrating 50 Years of the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design

    Published by Massachusetts College of Art and Design
    Boston, MA, 2023
    Curated by Evan F. Smith, Nita Sturiale and Sam Toabe
    Written by Kate Redmond and Nita Sturiale with contributions by John Engstrom, Mary K. Grant, Dawn Kramer, Jeff McLaughlin, Dana Moser, Juan Obando, Susan Orlean, Evan F. Smith, Robert Taylor, and Ron Wallace.
    Edited by Danielle Weindling

    Distributed by Printed Matter, Draw Down, and MassArt Bookstore    Designed Mass Art SIM program’s 50-year anniversary catalog, which features 500 pages of 500 images from the MassArt library archives along with essays, reproduced texts, featured faculty and alum, and a glossary of SIM terms. I co-moderated a panel about archiving, designing, and curating radical art histories.

    ✸ Co-moderated and presented at panel discussion at MassArt


    Book design, researchBook Cover Designs

    Published by University of Washington Press and Verso Books
    Seattle, WA, and Chicago, IL, 2020–2022
    Book cover designs for books centered on Asia and Asian American scholarship.
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